Backstory: Why Chet Smith mattered

By Michael Green

Chet Smith died recently, and chances are you didn't know it--or, for that matter, who he was. That would have mattered to him, because he cared deeply about Nevada and its history--and cared that you should know them and that he affected them.

At age 19, Smith was a newspaper editor. It was just before World War II and he worked for Avery Stitser, one of Nevada's few women publishers, at the Humboldt Daily Star. Back then, Nevada's dailies were a far cry from those you should read today--often four pages, usually no more than 10. And small-town editors didn't just sit in their offices and wait for news, as too many small-town and big-city journalists do today. They went out, met people, listened and learned.

Smith did all that, then served in World War II and came home to become a lawyer. He was one of a long line of McCarran Boys. Nevada's senator provided jobs to young men--and, in those more sexist times, some women--going to law school or just trying out life in the nation's capital.

The master of this process was Sen. Pat McCarran. He divided money he received for staff positions and hired more part-timers. He helped Nevadans and built loyalty that served him politically. One of the first he helped was Alan Bible, one of his successors in the Senate. About 50 others followed, including Gov. Grant Sawyer and Supreme Court Justice Jon Collins, whom Smith worked with in McCarran's office while attending school.

Then Smith went to work for Sen. E.P. Carville. That said a lot about both McCarran and Smith. Carville had been governor and a McCarran ally until he tired of the senator telling him who to appoint, what bills to sign and when he could go to the bathroom. Then, when Sen. James Scrugham died, Carville resigned as governor. McCarran's enemy, Lt. Gov. Vail Pittman, took over and named Carville to the vacant seat. McCarran liked those maneuvers as much as he liked prune juice in his scotch.

Yet McCarran didn't care whether his boys disagreed with him and probably didn't mind knowing someone behind enemy lines. Not that it would have done him any good. Smith understood loyalty, too, and gave Carville his all--as he did later when he again worked for McCarran.

Smith also worked for Gov. Charles Russell, whom he served as budget director in the early 1950s. He also had been best man at Russell's wedding. And in the small world of Nevada politics, when Russell had been defeated for re-election to the House in 1948, who got him a job in Washington? McCarran, of course. Russell was a Republican, but what mattered to him--and Smith and McCarran, both Democrats--was that they were Nevadans committed to what they thought was best for their state.

Smith then worked for another senator, Bible, running his election campaigns and handling staff work for his committees. When Bible retired in 1974, Sen. Howard Cannon snapped up Smith for a similar role. They needed him and he helped them help Nevada--from the Southern Nevada Water Project, which pumped the water that enabled Las Vegas to grow, to Cannon's measures on behalf of gaming, education and defense.

What made Smith invaluable was his intelligence, his memory, his rectitude and his notetaking; he took down everything. He never sought high office himself, since he never suffered fools gladly; it would be fun to ask him what he thought of a congressman from Nevada plagiarizing a speech and sounding like a moron, or a mayor extolling the virtues of gin to fourth-graders, or, for that matter, anyone making a big deal of a mayor extolling the virtues of gin to fourth-graders.

Whether Smith would have given his opinion is another matter. He knew a lot but usually confided it only to close friends. Happily, he spoke to some historians trying to write recent Nevada history. That was an adventure, since he knew more than we did. He knew more than most people.

He also saw more than most people. One of his first memories, when he was barely out of diapers, was seeing President Warren Harding's funeral train pass through Winnemucca in 1923. If it helps you measure a man's life, that was 14 presidents ago.

The other thing about Chet Smith was that, frankly, he could be difficult. He was so bright, so serious about his work, that he could wear people out. One time he was touring rural Nevada with two fellow Bible supporters. Smith told them to stop the car so he could make a phone call (yes, once upon a time, people didn't have cellular phones). Smith entered the booth and closed the door behind him.

The other two campaigners were more fun-loving than Smith. So, they pulled the car up against the door to the phone booth, trapping Smith inside, and headed for a bar. Several drinks later, Smith arrived, understandably agitated and not hiding it. One of them looked at him and said, "Why didn't you call?"

Apparently, Smith had no answer. That may have been the only time. Losing him means losing the answers to a lot of questions, and reminds us that once, in Nevada and elsewhere, what mattered was doing the job right and loyalty to your friends. Few were truer to those ideals than Chet Smith.